William Hook's Gambit

[falloutimperial]

In a 3.5 game of which I am a player, a civil war is brewing between anti-monarchists and monarchists, who are currently in power. My character, the charismatic halfling salesman William Hook, is currently hatching a plan to come out ahead from the unfortunate war, and I'd like your help in fool-proofing my plan. The plan shall be kept secret from the DM whenever possible. We are currently fourth level, but I expect we will level once or twice before trying this:

One: Learn about the legal proceedings of the nation, especially how lawyers are licensed and whether truth-seeking magic is used.

Two: Approach the anti-monarchist group and offer to get rid of the king for a sum of money. They don't seem to have much malice for him, so we shall attempt to get double if we can do it without killing him.

Three: Find permanently mind-altering magic (which the DM has confirmed exists in the setting) and acquire three scrolls of a memory-altering spell.

Four: Learn when the king will alone, perhaps by befriending him. Get the party spell-caster into position

Five: Rewrite his memory to be those of someone impersonating the king.

Six: Reveal the imposter and report back to the anti-monarchists.

Seven: Rewrite the anti-monarchist leaders' to those of a loyal monarchist infiltrating the group to destroy it from the inside-out.

Eight: Polymorph my character to have the exact appearance of the king.

Nine: Rewrite my characters' memory to be that of the king, using as much information as I can get my hands on as well as self-induced amnesia. Ensure a trigger phrase will reawaken my characters' real memory.

Ten: The party "saves" me, returning me to the kingdom for a hefty reward.

Eleven: My mind is re-awoken. My friends and I are now in charge of a nation where the rebels are ripping themselves apart. All by level eight.


During certain stages of the plan, the party makes a net-gain and we can quit if the heat becomes too much. Have I missed anything?

[Sgt. Cookie]

Yes.

Can the process be reversed?

If so then your local Church of Goodness and Healing^TM will nullify many of your plans. You need a plan to deal with them.

[Marcelinari]

A daring plan, but I can see a few holes. Firstly, obtaining mind-altering magic is probably going to be difficult, and certainly expensive. Then, 'getting the king alone' is likely to be nigh impossible, doubly so when there's a civil war brewing. Lastly, 'Polymorph' is a min/level spell, and Polymorph Any Object is an 8th level spell.

This isn't even taking into account the difficulties in assuming that memories can be brought back with a trigger, that the 'King' (who the courts have already found to be an imposter once) will not be interrogated and asked questions that only he should know how to answer, and your inability to bug out when you think you're the king. Should they discover the deception, you'll have no idea how to save yourself.

As remedies to these problems, I suggest research. Pay a wizard to look into the possibilities of specifically made memory-alteration spells. Weasel a member of your team into court, and buy him a Medallion of Thoughts. Get your hands on a PAO scroll. Last but not least, get the crown to pay you for destroying the rebels as the rebels pay you for deposing the king.

I've probably missed bit here and there, but that covers the bulk of what I saw.

[falloutimperial]

Yes.

Can the process be reversed?

If so then your local Church of Goodness and Healing^TM will nullify many of your plans. You need a plan to deal with them.

If the plan goes well, hopefully no one will think to examine his memories. Still, reversability might be a problem that should be pre-empted. Thank you.

[Heatwizard]

Six: Reveal the imposter and report back to the anti-monarchists.

Your plan seems largely based on 'revealing' impostors and spies. What's your plan to do that? Even if you get the king to think he's a fake, the hard part will be convincing the rest of government, because he's not about to sell himself out. Even if they use Zones of Truth or what have you, it'll be a hard sell to get them to even screen the king in the first place. You'll need hard evidence to get suspicion on him in the first place. Also, try to find out how your DM will interpret the interaction here; if he thinks he's lying but what he's saying is true, will the Zone trigger? The opposite will also be relevant when you try to step in.

One problem with the current state of the plan is that it has your fingerprints all over it. You swoop in and expose the king, then you expose the rebel traitors, then your party finds the real king and gets promoted to Royal Team of Sweet Guys. With secret plans like this, you want as much work as possible being done by someone else; and on top of that, you want them to think it was their idea. The less your name comes up, the better. The suspiciously active strangers from out of town swooping in to expose royal deception is suspicious, but the vizier unraveling the same plot (with the help of some anonymous envelopes full of letters between the 'fake' king and his conspirators, perhaps) is less so.

If the rebels have multiple leader-figures, you can always turn them against each other non-magically. If they don't, then you can always pick a friend out of the rank and file, help him lead some successful missions, and get him up to hero status. Then, once everyone's looking up to him and high off his victories, you start suggesting to him that he might be a better leader than the current guy! Who, and don't tell anyone, has been meeting with some shady characters...

[BRC]

The sort of Memory-rewriting magic you're talking about is going to be very, very powerful. You're apparently going to try to do this at Sixth level?
The closest I can find is Modify Memory, which can modify, at most, five minutes of memory, and illogical memories are likely to be written off as a bad dream, so implanting the King with memories that he's actually an impostor will probably just mean that the King thinks he ate some bad pork and dreamed that he was an imposter.

Plus, your plan centers around the idea of getting close to the king in a time of civil war, then casting spells on him.

At this point, it would be easier to just mind control the King into trusting the PC's implicitly. If you want to send the Rebels into chaos, don't try to turn people into Monarchist infiltrators (See above, really, really hard). Instead, plant memories (or even just suspicions) that OTHER rebel leaders are monarchist infiltrators, and let the rebellion tear itself to shreds with paranoia. It's a lot easier to plant suspicion in somebodies mind (Add a memory of them overhearing a conversation, or simply use a well-worded Suggestion spell) than it is to rewrite somebody's personality.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I agree with the others. This is way too heavy-handed and relies on magic that I only know of in the form of 8th and 9th level spells; specifically PAO, mind-rape, and programmed amnesia.

And how exactly do you plan to keep all this secret from the DM? He's running the vendors that sell you the scrolls, and he's going to see the moves you make on both sides of the conflict. He'll shut this down before it can even get started properly if he suspects you're trying to break the campaign.

Besides, what monarch doesn't have a crown with a mindblank effect woven directly into it? Enchanters are a thing. Security measures will be taken to prevent them from taking over at the drop of a hat.

[Griffith!]

Won't work. You're too public. Any rogue worth his salt knows the last thing you want is the mark knowing your face. You need proxies and agents; even peasants will work in most cases, you just can't be seen doing things. And I have no idea how you think you're going to get a king alone in the middle of a civil war, but even if you do it seems kind of unlikely anybody under the king is going to believe he's an imposter. More likely that you, the vagabond out-of-towners he was seen with last, have somehow ensorcelled him.

But hey, that's me. Maybe your GM will be less suspicious about it.

[Dimers]

Besides, what monarch doesn't have a crown with a mindblank effect woven directly into it? Enchanters are a thing. Security measures will be taken to prevent them from taking over at the drop of a hat.

Actually, the drop of a hat would be exactly what allows the enchanter to take over

[Kelb_Panthera]

Actually, the drop of a hat would be exactly what allows the enchanter to take over

*groan* I should've seen that one coming.

[Sith_Happens]

: "I approve of this plan and see no way in which it could horribly unravel all at once."